Patent Law and Practice

Patent Law and Practice was first published for federal judges by the Federal Judicial Center, and the FJC continues to distribute each new edition to the judges and their clerks to keep them up to date on patent law changes. This insider’s look at patent litigation helps you to forecast how your case arguments will be interpreted by the court. The judiciary relies on Patent Law and Practice, citing it often, most notably in the 1996 Supreme Court decision affecting almost every subsequent patent case—Markman v. Westview.

Patent Law and Practice, Fourth Edition has been updated to reflect changes in patent law since the last edition. The most significant, and anticipated, change in patent law was the Supreme Court's decision in Festo Corp. v. Shoketsu Kinzoku Kogyo Kabushiki Co., 535 U.S. 722, 62 USPQ2d 1705 (2002), which resolved important issues regarding prosecution-history estoppel.

Critical new issues addressed.

Other areas of patent law covered in the Fourth Edition that are most effected by Federal Circuit decisions since publication of the prior edition are:

--nonobviousness, the on-sale bar, the written-description requirement, --enablement, the Waxman-Hatch Act, the right to a jury trial, the experimental-use defense, attorney fees, laches, and the prior-inventor defense. The Fourth Edition also explains recent significant Federal Circuit decisions regarding: inequitable conduct, claim construction, claim indefiniteness, implied license, the best-mode requirement, correcting inventorship, and when the Federal Circuit will not defer to state law or the law of the relevant regional circuit.

You can use the latest edition of Patent Law and Practice to:

--cite cases and sources relied upon by the bench. --direct the judge to a specific page in the guide—for a key case or explanation. --understand—and specifically address—procedural issues facing the court.